


sorry about the blood in your mouth

by sorosilicates (purplefennels7)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Betrayal, M/M, for the first and last time in my career jasper is hydra, i am so fucking sorry about this, the jasper-betrays-nick fic that Literally No One Asked For
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-08
Updated: 2020-05-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:42:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23616181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplefennels7/pseuds/sorosilicates
Summary: i wish it was mine.no matter how far jasper runs, he knows nick will catch up with him. after what he's done, it can't end any other way.
Relationships: Nick Fury/Jasper Sitwell
Kudos: 2





	sorry about the blood in your mouth

**Author's Note:**

> god im. so sorry. i don't know what got into me. this is the first time i've ever not been able to use the _i believe in jasper sitwell_ tag and i do not recognize myself in the mirror. i literally posted this under a different pseud cause it's so off my brand. who am i. what the fuck

It's Nick, in the end. It was only ever going to be Nick, here on the edge of a rooftop in Bogota, where they always said they would go when they finally retired. He knows the order on his head is shoot-to-kill, has known since he came home and found his flash drives spread out on the dining-room table like a warning: _I know._ It's in the way Nick holds his gun, in the tension in his fingers that speaks of laser sightlines on his back, snipers on the next complex over. And yet, he's still alive. 

Jasper could say a million things. _I'm sorry. Fuck you. SHIELD was wrong. I had no other choice._

_Hail Hydra._

_I still love you._

Instead, he says, "How long have you known?"

Nick's hands tighten on his gun, and for a moment Jasper thinks, this is it. This is where he dies.

Or maybe he's dead already, maybe he's been dead all this time, since the first time _Hydra_ had crossed his mind without _evil_ right behind it.

"Since Insight," Nick says, and his face is a mask.

 _That long?_ Jasper wants to say, wants to scream. And quieter, like a ghost, like a dirty little secret: _Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you save me?_

"What gave me away?" he says instead. When Nick's face changes this time, it isn't anger, like he'd expected.

It's grief, and it feels like a knife in the back. He wants Nick to shout, wants him to swear, to hate him for what he’s done, for the trust he’s betrayed. He would hate himself. He kind of does, already.

"The Jasper I knew never would've even considered it. When you said _maybe_ _,_ I knew." Jasper's mouth tightens against his will, and Nick raises a heartbreakingly familiar eyebrow. After all this time, Nick still knows his tells. "It wasn't because I said it, no. You never hesitated to stand up when you thought I was wrong."

Jasper's throat feels thick, heavy with a feeling he can't place. He looks at Nick, and sees it in the curve of his shoulders. Guilt.

"Nick," he says, and his voice catches.

"No. You don't get to call me that. Not now," and Jasper knows _now_ means this, means this rooftop, means Nick's gun, means after everything he's done, after every time he's said Hail Hydra, after every secret he's spilled. Means after _this_ _,_ after the kitchen they'd painted together, after the car rides to work, after Nick-and-Jasper becomes just Nick, and a house with Jasper's name still on the mortgage.

"Nick," he says again, anyway, desperately, just so he can hear it like it used to be, one last time before the end. "I think this is the part where I die."

He says it like he's discussing the weather, like he's asking Nick how his day at work was. Nick swallows. There's a tear glimmering in the harshness of the sunlight, just at the corner of his eye.

"No," he says. He makes a tiny, aborted motion, like he wants to reach for Jasper's hand. "My Jasper, I think, has been dead for a very long time."

\---

It's a clean shot, the autopsy will say, later. Through the head, point-blank range. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Nick doesn't cry, not there in Bogota, not on the jet back to New York. Not when he lets himself back into the house that now belongs only to him.

He breaks down when he lights the first match, standing in their little backyard over a pile of their photos, Jasper's old mission reports, their books of recipes, Jasper's record collection. He stands there and watches for a very long time, as what's left of their life together burns. 

**Author's Note:**

> want to yell at me? yeah i do too. 
> 
> [tumblr](https://romanovnat.tumblr.com)


End file.
